Boards›Gameplay

Better Nerf Irelia Meme has been transferred to Malzahar

How Do You Meta··58 votes·2,217 views

Riot claims to not balance champions based on professional play, yet they continue to do so anyways.

People who claim all of this is justified because Malzahar was just way too oppressive need to get off their high horses just because their main wasn't nerfed because a lot of champions are oppressive and hardly any of them are getting string after string of flat out nerfs without compensation.

What is with their micro focus on making Malzahar unplayable? This is some of the worst balancing decisions ever. So it's ok to have a handful of professionally spammed champions like Lee Sin and Orianna spammed all the time but its a problem when Malzahar sees any competitive play? No one played him before the rework and he was just fine and had a clear cut kit. Now what's the point of playing him with all of his endless pure nerf with zero compensation kit?

Just revert this failed experiment, this is the worst, you shouldn't nerf a champion so its completely unplayable.

"Balancing" a champion by constantly nerfing it so no one plays it means you failed in your kit designs and need to start over, this is not an appropriate way to handle a problem.

47 Comments

Danjeng11 votes

I main Ryze, and Malzahar was very oppressive when he was reworked. I was surprised it managed to get out live in the state he was. In fact, Ryze had the lowest win rate vs Malzahar for a while sitting in the 30s%. He was pretty unfun to play against.

Then his passive got nerfed. Okay I thought. Then his passive got nerfed again heavily. That's a pretty big hit but he's still FotM and dominating. Then his voidlings got "changed". He's still space aids. Then his voidlings got straight up nerfed. Okay Riot, maybe that's enough. Then his voidlings got nerfed again!

At this point I don't even mind Malzahar. While he was completely destroying me before, I feel that those nerfs were unjustified. Maybe if one or two of them gone through. But seeing a champion get nerfed again and again and again is hard to watch. Even if I hate that champion.

Maybe it's because Ryze is on a similar boat. Good in competitive and bad in solo queue. Just nerf and nerf and nerf and oh well. Welcome to the club buddy. Meanwhile a blind monk ward hops right in front of the balancing team's eyes.

SEKAI2 votes

{quoted}

Meanwhile a blind monk ward hops right in front of the balancing team's eyes.

The balance team be like "No more! No more kick in the faces and sonic blasts! Look! You're still top boy, everybody's favourite! We ain't touching nothing! Mercy! We beg you!!!"

Lee Sin then lifted his blindfold to read the stat sheet for a second, he nodded with a "hmph", and vanished with another ward-hop.

Arsenic Sulfur1 votes

However, diver update comin' soon. He may be able to fuck with the balance team, but the update/rework one won't budge so easily. SIX MONTHS LEE SIN! SIX MONTHS!

LordGeovanni1 votes

Like they would touch a blind man. Even worse like they would touch the blind god.

Arsenic Sulfur1 votes

idk, with him being able to dash to something with pin-point precision I don't believe that is something a blind man could do. For all we know he could've been faking this just to sneak past the balance hammer.

LordGeovanni1 votes

You mean like the Cripple Twitch streamer. What ever it is LCS BIG PLAYS Lee Sin is good at it and Riot eats it up.

deadlychuck1 votes

The problem stems from the poorly designed W.

If you don't focus him or his voidlings, they to a ton of damage. If you address them, they do basically nothing.

Now, while he had the advantage of being over tuned, allowing him to be played in match ups like ryze, and completely dominate. On a basic design level, his W is more powerful in a support position than a primary laning position, because he is more often not priority.

They keep wanting to nerf him because his support play is too strong, but so long as his kill potential is stuffed into his W, his support play will always be better than any other position (besides jungle maybe), as a result of being able to actually maximize the power of his W. Unlike other lanes which will instantly delete his voidlings (resulting in 0 damage) or have the enemy instantly back off the moment you start your 10 second delayed burst damage.

ModCaptainMårvelous7 votes

Riot claims to not balance champions based on professional play, yet they continue to do so anyways.

No, they admit to doing so. (As they do with other champions) What they admit is that they try to balance for pro AND pub play. Which doesn't work at this point because of what is required to be changed. They also balance around PUB play and that's why you see random things like Volibear nerfs or Cho'gath mini-reworks.

Anidan3 votes

If anything is ever changed about Heimer it's not for pro play, I can guarantee you that, for another example of pub balance.

junglerboy161 votes

Well the current batch of Heimer changes is actually based around fixing him so that there's a chance he's viable in high elo/pro scene without breaking pubs

KoggyStyle1 votes

waiting on the nasus nerfs next patch >:)

TyrekGoldenspear4 votes

This was justified because old Malzahar was too oppressive before.

And my main was nerfed for the exact reason. (among others.) Azir

Thefrostyviking2 votes

But it was promised that Malz would receive help for his midlane when the support nerfs came through?

Instead they are just directly gutting him and leaving him for dead with not the slightest hint of any help for mid :(

Right now it's manageable, his minions are a bit stupid but due to the 2 hit requirment they aren't completely useless. You can manage in lane by being sneaky.

But nerfing it down to a single hit? They will just instantly die from any AOE, any waveclear or you know,....sunfire cape.

They shifted power from his E, Q and R to his passive and W.

Then they nerfed the passive because it was a really god damm awful passive that could never not be OP without being borderline bad.

Then now they are nerfing his minions because they are too powerful.

But Riot haven't said anything about buffing E-Q-R that got their power cut to enhance the other stuff, thus slowly making him harder and harder to play mid and if the 1 hp minion nerf goes through then it will be hell.

His minions won't provide waveclear, they won't work for teamfights and they won't work against ADC's with Runaan or a tank with sunfire....or you know.

AOE in general.

How is this justified to his players who didn't want that crazy passive or dumb W in the first place? Even Arya wrote on this if i recall.

Lauchmelder1 votes

Quite honestly, Malzahar is by FAR not through an Azir level gutting. Acting like he got Azir'd is simply being in denial.

Rebonack3 votes

[{quoted}](name=MadKnife IV,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=7A6UQtz8,comment-id=000100000000,timestamp=2017-05-07T14:46:39.355+0000)

Quite honestly, Malzahar is by FAR not through an Azir level gutting. Acting like he got Azir'd is simply being in denial.

That may be true, but the rework Malz mains had to endure would be like Azir mains having to put up with the bulk of his damage being moved from his soldiers to shoulder-checking people with his dash.

Lauchmelder1 votes

While yes, I would dislike it, I would still play him and find a way he would work.

Thefrostyviking1 votes

You´d find a way to play Azir if a good portion of his damage was moved into his E?

That's.....kinda admirable but i can't see it working since E moves you into shooting distance for tanks and ADCs. As a mage you´d get dumpstered, especially now that both tanks and ADC's have been buffed along with mage supports.

Lauchmelder1 votes

I would play him kind of like Rumble, on the tankier side. You'd be a Shurima Shuffle bot after engaging, so it wouldn't be that much of a problem.

Thefrostyviking1 votes

That i did not write though? I stated that riot, despite promising not to, are nerfing him to the ground where he´ll become like Azir soon enough. He is not there yet.

Both Azir and Malz are bottom tier at the moment, just that Azir is further down.

Every single Malzahar main that was active on the forums or Reddit protested the changes to his passive and W stating that they were highly inbalanced and would be hard as hell to balance. But the lead designer choose to ignore them and went ahead with his idea's anyway.

The result? A guy so OP that he could walk up to a Syndra and kill her in a single rotation without losing 50% hp, he could win 1v2 against a early ADC and support, against a jungler and midlaner ( i actually did that so i know) .

And so as we all expected he was consecutively nerfed, because his passive was way too strong, because his W was oppressive as hell to deal with unless you can oneshot him.

But now after the nerfs? Passive is decent/good, it won't save you if an assassin goes all in but it does prevent sudden chain CC combo´s.

W is kinda bad but it´s workable. E-Q are gimmicky but they also work. Ulti needs a ton of AP to do anything but that is fine as well since it's so strong in terms of CC.

But further nerfing his W? He won´t have any waveclear left since E and Q were nerfed to move power into W ( less damage and higher mana costs), his minions will be even more useless for teamfights and he might as well not have the ability to call them since it won't be used anyway.

All this despite a lot of promising not to do it.

I wouldn't be so mad if they just straight up said something like " Alright this wasn't such a great idea so we're dumpstering him until further notice" but instead they act like it's not an issue and promise to "do a few small tweaks" that "won't affect midlane malz or if they do we´ll buff him to compensate" and instead they just straight up nerf him and leave it at that.

This is why the malz players are feeling quite discontent :(

ShaolinToilet1 votes

They are buffing him. Don't comment on what rioters say if you don't read it all.

Thefrostyviking2 votes

How are they buffing him? They are changing it from a 2-3 hits bar to a 60 health ( that's 1 hit! ) That scales like +3 per lvl ( still one hit!)

Removing all the movespeed, lowering the duration but indeed a few buffs to damage.

Oh and you can summon up to 3 of them at once, if you use the other spells first.

Which....is completely irrelevant since they still die of a single hit from anything besides a minion, and they don't have the movepseed to catchup if the opponent is running away anymore, oh joy.

What good is buffing the minions damage and pushing if they won't survive to use it? It looks good on paper but a single spell from the opponent and that sweet 3 minion summon you just spent 230-ish mana has gone down the drain.

So effectively minions in that state are fairly damm useless as long as the opponent has the presence of mind to land a single spell on them when they spawn. Or if they try to walk toward a runaan user....or a sunfire user.

Yay minions can now push empty lanes faster.....splitpush malz sounds great....

Lauchmelder1 votes

They aren't nerfing him though.

Thefrostyviking2 votes

Cutting the minions movespeed and health making them slower and so that they die of a single hit.

Oh and they're lowering their resistances-....while buffing damage a bit.

And it's possible to stack up charges to summon 3 at once.

.....

yay they got damage buffs and you can summon more.....altho they die in a single hit to compensate and they lost all ability to catch the opponent if they are running away or kiting.

Does this seem like a buff to you? ._.

The only thing he can do better after that is push empty lanes ._.

"oh look enemy kata left mid to gank bot? Sweet now i can push into tower and hit it for 50 damage per auto while kata get's a tripple, such a good deal.......oh wait".

Splitpush malz, yaaaayyy...

It's like the guy who made that abomination of a rework is trying to balance him around with the same methods.

It's not working at all.

Lauchmelder1 votes

They make his minions more or less spamable now.

Thefrostyviking1 votes

8 second cooldown seems spammable to you?

Needs to cast the other spells first to actually summon 3 seems spammable? (hint, you´ll run outa mana if you try to do that more then a few times)

Without movement speed, without any real health, how are they supposed to work?

You summon 3, enemy throws one spell and all 3 die and now you've effectively burnt 220 manaout of 470 at lvl 4.

And nothing's been archived at all, except making the opponent use a single spell-

They´re no use for teamfights fights, won't be able to push protected lanes and even for the lane duels they won't be doing anything since they are slower then champions, opponent just need to kite and suddenly the minions won't do anything.

Spammable minons....except malz can't afford the mana cost and they can't do anything except push empty lanes.....

So very useful....or not at all actually.

Lauchmelder1 votes

You do realize that the 1-hit part only applies to auto attacks right?

Thefrostyviking2 votes

How so? Many spells, even AOE, deal roughly 70-100 damage at lvl 1.

The bottom line there is more than 20 over the minions health.

Samples of this :

Ziggs Q = 75

Ahri Q = 80.

Xerath Q = 80.

Vel koz W = 75.

And those with lower all tend to have roughly 60 or slightly more.

So just a little AP and a single AOE spell with render malz W, null.

Lauchmelder1 votes

You forget about MR here friend.

Thefrostyviking2 votes

And i didn't count AP, nor did i count the fact that those spells all scale like 20+ damager per rank so that when malz can actual summon 3 of them it's already very easy for the opponent to KO them.

Not to mention that he burns through 50% mana just to summon 3 of them as soon as possible.

But what if he goes back and buys some mana and whatever so he does not burnout from a single rotation or two?

Opponent does that too and now the minion will die from a single hit x)

Lauchmelder1 votes

Ok, let's agree to disagree.

I prefer to wait and see how a change turns out instead of complaining about changes on paper, not everybody is like me though.

Thefrostyviking1 votes

Alright let's do that.

deadlychuck2 votes

He wasn't too oppressive, he was just good at forcing the lane's tempo.

There is a tempo arms race going on right now, where higher tempo aggressive champions have a clear advantage over relatively lower tempo aggressive champions.

Malzahar acted as a kind of limiter on this tempo growth. Not that he was in every game, but without giving every high tempo champion, some method of disrupting his tempo breaking (e.g. fizz ult), then he would become more powerful as he equally successfully brought champion who were designed to be played at a high tempo, down to a lower tempo of play.

Basically, riot doesn't like champions who are designed to resist their biased design.

Pandemic Punch3 votes

Ivern is too strong right now so we better delete one of the abilities in Malzahar's kit. Now that Malzahar only has two damaging abilities besides his ult, that should put Ivern in a good spot.

nice table2 votes

if my mains ever saw pro play they would first have to be buffed to insane levels so im not getting off my high horse :^)

General Esdeath 1 votes

Why did you make this post twice?

Quantum Lotus1 votes

Malz? More like shaco...

SweedishGunner1 votes

Shaco was running around with a 55%+ winrate at one point. Malz has never done that.

ZyniX2 votes

If you were a malz main before the rework it was easy to get 60%+ winrate.

Wind Whistler2 votes

{quoted}

If you were a malz main before the rework it was easy to get 60%+ winrate.

If you mained almost any underplayed champion like Malzahar, you would find out that they're absolutely broken and that you can achieve around a 70% winrate with them. Same goes for Swain, Yorick, and Galio. Probably why Swain is being removed soon.

macromite1 votes

Swain is being removed soon

I feel like I'm missing something.

Wind Whistler2 votes

{quoted}

I feel like I'm missing something.

Oh, sorry. I mean "reworked". Lol. No. I'm calling it what it is.

Sorry for the confusion, though.

Frnak2 votes

{quoted}

If you mained almost any underplayed champion like Malzahar, you would find out that they're absolutely broken and that you can achieve around a 70% winrate with them. Same goes for Swain, Yorick, and Galio. Probably why Swain is being removed soon.

"broken". You mean no one knew what their kits did and made poor decisions, like trying to towerdive a Malz without QSS.

Yeah, I broke into Plat with him before rework. I was over 70%. The barrier dropped me down to low 60%s. But the whole "LOL IM SUPERZ MOBILZ ASSINRATES ALL MIDZZ" shit was annoying af and Malz was the perfect counter to that entire era. Those few who knew how to play against him ... well, I had to really, really, play it safe, and with any coordination, I got dumpstered.

Super long ass CDs. If Malz uses E to push lane, bait out Q... boom. W and R would not end anyone together unless you were super low. Notthathardtoplayagainstifyouhadanyexperienceseeingthemorplayingasthem.

Wind Whistler1 votes

Was referring more to champions like Yorick, Galio, and Urgot. Poppy too, but to a lesser extent. Unsure of Sion.

No one knows what they do- You're right. Since no one plays them, they assume that they suck, and when you pump out a ridiculous amount of damage, whether it's sustained (Urgot), burst (Galio), or both, they're almost always caught off guard when you kick their ass.

Malzahar WAS strong, though. Not broken, but strong. High AP Ratios. Good CC. High base damages. Pretty reliable spells.

SweedishGunner2 votes

Malz main vs the average winrate for all players...slight difference.

55976771DEL21 votes

Still everybody forgot ''Better nerf Kassadin ''?

Nilok1 votes

When Malzahar gets reverted, I'll start spending money on this game again. Until then, Games Workshop is actually listening to community feedback for 40k.

LordGeovanni1 votes

What happens when you put a defensive passive that good on some one so safe and still priority target

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by How Do You Meta

My absolute favorite mission is the one that asks for players to buy control wards
Gameplay71 comments
221
votes
Can we revert refillable potion's icon?
Gameplay85 comments
153
votes
When the missions are too hard
Memes & Games29 comments
134
votes
"Buy our summer pass!"
General Discussion38 comments
120
votes
Can we nerf the surrender box please?
Gameplay49 comments
80
votes
Look at this comp, isn't it neat?
Memes & Games26 comments
76
votes